Government Integrity Project

NLPC “blows the whistle” on government officials and interest groups engaged in questionable activities. NLPC has filed formal Complaints with a variety of authorities and regulators, including the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Congressional Ethics Committees.

NLPC supports government integrity in two additional ways: by promoting the First Amendment as the basis for campaign finance reform, and by promoting use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Simply put, Governor Blagojevich became a golden goose of opportunity for well-connected businessmen in the state who were apparently willing to “buy” the governor’s unwavering personal attention for their pet legislative causes. And while Patrick Quinn, Illinois’ new governor, remarked last week that “everybody knows we’ve had a tough eight weeks, but it’s over,” it’s not. Springfield must now work overtime to unravel the mess the ex-governor and his well-connected business friends created, or Illinois will rightly deserve its reputation as the most corrupt state in the country.

On February 2, NLPC released an in-depth analysis of financial contributions made to Blagojevich’s campaigns from horse race track owner John Johnston and other Johnston-owned or affiliated interests. The analysis demonstrated that previous accounts of Johnston contributions to Blagojevich by the Wall Street Journal and other publications greatly … Read More ➡

If Barack Obama wants another trillion or more for toxic-asset purchases, what was the TARP for? The burden is on him and Timothy Geithner to explain why another Wall Street bailout will work when the previous ones have not.

This latest plan would have the taxpayer finance the purchase of troubled assets, opening the door for unregulated opaque entities like hedge funds to speculate with taxpayer funds. This “public-private partnership” might also be called the Obama Hedge Fund Bailout.

When TARP was passed by Congress in October, its purported purpose was to buy toxic assets from banks. Instead, the $700 billion has been used to buy preferred stock in banks, bail out the automakers, and now bail out the automakers’ suppliers. Yet these stock purchases have failed to prevent the deterioration of bank’s capital positions, even as common stock, held by millions of small investors, has been crushed.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) would seem an unlikely point man for the legislation passed by the House yesterday imposing a 90% tax on any bonuses given to employees with family incomes of more than $250,000 at firms that received more than $5 billion in bailout funds.

As exposed by NLPC, Rangel failed to pay federal income tax on rent received from his beachfront home in the Dominican Republic, and cheated on his D.C. property tax by improperly claiming a homestead exemption. Also, Rangel led a Citigroup-funded Caribbean junket last November that violated House rules.

After the 328-93 vote, the indignant Rangel warned, “Don’t dare try to take a bonus and get away with it.”

In a CNBC interview, Rangel was challenged on his moral authority to lead the floor fight for the bill. Strangely, Rangel seemed to deny the “false” reports about his own tax evasion, even though he admitted … Read More ➡

Peter Flaherty today expressed surprise and disgust at the current attempt by fired Fannie Mae Chairman and CEO Franklin Raines to walk away with millions of dollars despite his central role in the accounting scandal rocking the company.

According to Flaherty, “At the time, I remember having very little luck in drumming up interest in this issue. I was a guest on a couple of local radio shows, but that was it. I made a round of calls to Capitol Hill but nobody wanted to do anything.”

The release continued:

Flaherty said, “Let me get this straight. Raines apparently cooks the books, brings disgrace to the company, and imperils Fannie Mae’s standing with regulators, the Congress and administration. So for his punishment he is made wealthy for the rest of his life?”

The $787 billion economic stimulus package passed and signed into law last month had any number of co-sponsors in Congress, but in a real sense its main author was someone deceased for more than 60 years: English economist John Maynard Keynes (in photo). The measure, and proposals subsequent to it, represent a tribute to a highly flawed, though highly original thinker. They also speak of a larger ongoing and recent pendulum shift in theory and policy.

Much has been written, and deservedly so, about President Obama’s sense of racial grievance; his radicalism; his circle of Chicago friends and fixers; and his intense identification with Abraham Lincoln. Yet only recently that level of attention has been given to his economic worldview, all but in name Keynesian, to the current economic crisis. The president and his neo-Keynesian top economic advisers – Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner and Christina Romer – have made clear … Read More ➡

Barack Obama has shown no hesitation to wield the power of the state, but he claims that he’s unable to stop these outrageous AIG bonuses, even though taxpayers now own 80% of AIG.

Obama wants the government to dominate the health care and energy economies. He’s proposed huge new taxes to help finance expansion of the federal government. More to the point, he would allow bankruptcy judges to abrogate contracts as part of his mortgage bailout. His automaker bailout contemplates the setting aside or revision of UAW contracts.

It is astonishing that these bonuses will be paid to executives at AIG’s financial products division, the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps. AIG placed bets on derivative trades that it could not possibly pay off if it lost. This is called fraud. These bad bets were big enough to bring down the financial system.